Every year, eight thousand children in Calgary develop croup. Roughly one-quarter of them end up in hospital emergency wards. But now, researchers at the University of Calgary say they have found a treatment for the most common form of the virus. The problem affects children right across Canada. Nearly 75-thousand Canadian children develop croup every year. A Canada-wide study led by Calgary researchers found that using Dexamethasone reduced the number of return visits to a doctor for on-going croup symptoms. Dexamethasone is the common treatment for severe croup but until now, there hasn’t been any evidence that it would work for mild croup cases. Researchers estimate that just one dose of the drug will save the medical system about seven-dollars per patient and will reduce the burden on parents having to miss work because of hospital visits. They hope that following their study, dexamethasone will become the standard treatment for croup. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
